


This I Swear, or the Joke - Extended Edition

by Ingrid Pricks (coffee_pot)



Series: This I Swear [2]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: AU, AU where the supernatural doesn't exist and they're all sorta normal, Angst, DEATHHHHH, Destiel - Freeform, Domestic destiel, F/F, F/M, Fluff, I had pieces of this story that I just couldn't leave out, IMHO, M/M, all the feels, and more words, domestic AU, early relationship destiel, i made jess into a full fledged character and she's kinda great, i might have to write a sequel for this, lots of sadness, lots of tw see notes for details, nothing's been cut, shy destiel, so many feels, sorry - Freeform, tell me which version you like better, this version just has more details
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-07
Updated: 2019-08-07
Packaged: 2020-08-11 13:31:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 17,580
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20154406
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coffee_pot/pseuds/Ingrid%20Pricks
Summary: Sam could hear the overhead fan running in the bedroom, droning in a monotonic hum that made the whole place instantly sleepy. It smelled like one of Jess’s many candles in here; a kind of warm, fruity smell. Apple, maybe.She lit candles when she was hoping to get laid. The candle smelled like it was still lit. He could see the light from it wavering, now that he looked, down the hall in the bedroom.----This story started out as part of another fic that I've been working on for a couple years now, but it didn't fit in that story, so I've decided to make it a stand alone piece.Yes, I made an extended version of a story that already exists. I had some scenes I'd written that I couldn't bear to part with.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This story started out as part of another fic that I've been working on for a couple years now, but it didn't fit in that story, so I've decided to make it a stand alone piece.
> 
> Trigger warnings will be at the bottom of each chapter as necessary for that current chapter. If there are any you think I've missed, let me know.

Sam dove into the current of Christmas shoppers, holding his elbows into his sides in an unsuccessful attempt at avoiding colliding with the throb. He could see over most people’s heads, but there were many who were less fortunate. They were doomed to loop the mall, over and over again, with no concept of where they were or where they were going. He walked with them for a few minutes, and then the jewelry shop loomed out ahead of him. He worked his way to the edge of the crowd and shoved his way out just as the flow passed by.  
He’d barely made it through the doorway when he was ambushed by the jeweler. She swooped in on him, her long, french-manicured claws pulling him further in.

“Hi, Susan,” he said, removing himself from her grasp as politely as he could.

“Good afternoon,” she purred, shaking his hand. “Welcome. What can I do for you, Sam?”

“Hi. Um,” he stammered, still trying to catch his breath. 

Outside, the throng bubbled against the glass as they continued on their way. A few of them had found their way into the store before him. Now, they were huddling up against the cases to ogle at the displays.   
He rolled his shoulders, stretching his arms in appreciation for the sudden extra space around hi.

“I commissioned a custom piece on Tuesday, I’m here to pick it up.”

She squinted at him blankly. 

“The necklace, Susan. Remember?” 

She ducked in a circle around him, peering up at him. She bobbed her head, emerald earrings flashing menacingly with her movements.

“Ah! The diamond pendant. Of course I remember.”

“Yeah, the pendant,” he answered, washed in his relief. “It was supposed to be finished today?”

She nodded graciously. “But of course. We always finish commissions on schedule, barring any complications.”

“I know, Susan. You guys are good.”

“Which, of course, there were none,” she continued. She hadn’t heard him. “The piece you gave us to work with did all the heavy lifting. Beautiful diamond.”

“May I see it?”

She seized him by the arm and took him to the counter. He had to lean over to see when she dove down behind the counter into a locked drawer, and emerged with a velvet case cradled in her knobby hands. 

“Breathe,” she reminded him. 

He nodded, and she released the clasp and held the box out to him. He slid his fingers under the familiar precious stone, set against the silver of the new necklace, and lifted it out of the case, stroking his finger gently over it.

“Beautiful piece, really,” the jeweler commented. “Does it meet your expectations, Mr. Winchester?”

“You can call me Sam, Susan. And yeah. Damn. Yeah. it’s gorgeous.”

“You sure you’re not here for a ring, too?” she asked.

He smiled, trying to be tolerant, but barely succeeding. He couldn’t remember a time when he’d walked in and she hadn’t made that joke. Still not funny, Susan.   
He stood silently with the necklace in his hands for a moment, trying not to let the waves of emotion shake him too much. He was in public. Keep it together. He blinked against it, and turned away to wander the store while she wrapped the necklace for him.  
He jumped when she swooped down on him, holding his package and receipt out to him as she descended.

“Not here for a ring, you said?” she tilted her head.

‘No, Susan. I’m not here for a ring.” 

They were standing right over the case of engagement rings, though. He’d just walked up to it.   
No, not today. He didn’t have time, he was on a schedule, and he wasn’t looking at rings. It wasn’t part of the plan.  
He couldn’t help experiencing it though, even if it was just as some fantasy off in the distance. Jessica’s hand in his, and the stone digging into his palm, engraving her into his skin.

“Alright, Susan, you got me,” he pointed. “May I see that one please? No, the one on the left.   
Yes.” 

She swung the case open, bending her long neck to peer into the velvet lining, plucked up the ring, and handed it to him. She raised an eyebrow, but to her credit, she managed not to comment.  
After a few moments, he put the ring back.

“Thank you for your help,” he told Susan.

“Merry Christmas, Sam.”

“Merry Christmas.” 

He took his box and went.

\----  
It was snowing.   
Sam and Jessica ran across the yard, doubling over and trying to collect enough of the meager white powder to throw at each other.  
The sun had gone down, and the snow was more of a sparse frozen dust than full flakes, but it didn’t seem to bother the couple bouncing through it.

“They’re disgusting,” Charlie said, joining Dean at the kitchen window and handing him a beer. 

“It’s adorable.”

He wrapped his arm over her shoulder. “They’re happy. It’s good.”

“Yeah. You happy?” she asked.

“Sure. It was a good Christmas. You?” 

“Yeah,” she sighed. “I mean, it’d be nice to have Dorothy. Obviously. I’m glad I’m here, though. I would have just ended up in the apartment by myself with takeout.”

“I know.”

“Thanks for inviting me, by the way.”

He squeezed her shoulders. “Shut up, you’re family. Sorry about Dorothy.”

“It’s fine, I’m used to it.” 

“You could have stayed at the house, you know.” 

Charlie shrugged. “Eh, it’s fine. It’s been awhile since I got pampered at a hotel, anyway.”

“Because you’re getting so much spa time at Corner Inn. Really, why didn’t you stay here? You always stay here.” 

“You need this time with your real family, dude. It’s Christmas.”

“You’re my real family, too,” he begged.

She chewed on her lip. Sam was giving Jessica a piggyback ride through the thickening snowfall. 

“You know I’m not,” Charlie finally said. “I mean, obviously, I am. But I’m not, you know? Sam   
needs this time with you.” 

Dean sighed. “Does he?”

“Don’t. You know he does.” 

“Yeah, I guess. I know.”

She turned away from the window and set her beer down and grabbed his hands. “So. Shall we talk about your mysterious guest in the ridiculous coat?” 

“No, definitely not.” 

She sighed, rubbing her thumbs in circles over the tops of his hands, creating dizzying patterns of movement with her chipped green nail polish.

“Is this new?” he asked, holding her own arm in front of her face and tapping a thin, black tattoo that was swimming in the rainbow of other inks on her skin.

“Yep, I did it last week,” she grinned, holding her arm out so he could see better. It was a word, delicately drawn in a deeply sloping font. Ink.

“I like it. Very on the nose,” he said. “Did you do it yourself? At the shop?”

“Yep.” 

“I can’t believe you tattooed yourself again. You’re crazy, you know that.” 

“Hey! It’s fun. I get bored if I only do customers,” she whined. “Are you ever going to let me give you one? I’m thinking a glacier. Or a mountain. Right here,” she traced a rough outline over the left side of his chest with her fingertip.

He shook his head. 

“Fine,” she grumbled. She wrapped her arms around him and held on tightly. “Merry Christmas.”

“Merry Christmas, C.”   
\----  
It was almost an hour before Sam and Jessica tumbled back into the house with shiny reddened faces, roaring with laughter. Jessica’s hair was tangled in a button on Sam’s shirt, and they seemed unable to get it out.  
When Jessica was finally free, she stood up straight and came face to face with the velvet box Sam was holding out to her.  
She gasped, breathless, and pushed her hair out of her face. 

“Babe!”

Sam clasped the silver chain for her and kissed her hair. Ellen rushed forward and exclaimed over the new jewelry.   
Dean nodded approvingly at his little brother, and Sam blushed as his shoulders dropped in relief.

Jessica pressed herself into Sam’s chest and kissed him. 

“You know I hate jewelry,” she told him, clutching the necklace against herself.

“I hope you’ll forgive me,” he snapped the box shut and tossed it aside. Dean caught it.

“I suppose,” she smirked.

“It’s special,” Sam said, dropping his head and touching the diamond. “It was my mom’s. The diamond. The chain’s new.”

Jessica’s jaw dropped. “Sam!”

“She wore it at their wedding, it’s part of her necklace” Sam continued, glancing over to Dean. Dean nodded him onward encouragingly.

“Oh, Sam...I can’t, babe…”

“Don’t start,” Sam said firmly. “This is yours, now. I can’t imagine anyone else having it.”

“It’s gorgeous,” she whispered. “Oh, it’s perfect. Thank you.” 

He took her hands and squeezed them. “I’m not done yet, actually.”

“Ooooh,” Charlie exclaimed.

“Jessica Moore,” Sam smiled, “I know your and Ava ’s lease is up in a couple weeks. Will you move in with me?” 

She squealed and leapt onto him, wrapping her arms and legs around him and climbing to his face like he was a tree, peppering it with kisses when she got there. 

“Yes, yes, yes!”

\----  
The rest of the gifts were opened that evening with markedly less kissing and squeals.  
Ellen gave Dean a new set of dishes, and Jo gave him a bottle of whiskey, because she was Jo.   
Jessica gave him a set of cufflinks. Sam got nicer cufflinks, with his initials engraved in them. 

“Babe, I’m not this fancy,” Sam protested. 

“Um, yeah you are,” she laughed, kissing him.

“You guys are going to make me puke,” Jo groaned, coming back into the room with another round of beers. 

Sam made eye contact with her while he went back in for another kiss. Jo fake gagged.  
\---

If it were up to Sam, he would have spent the first night in his new apartment romancing his girlfriend with wine and roses.  
Yeah, that wasn’t going to happen tonight.  
At 2 o’clock in the morning, knee-deep in open boxes and crumpled newspapers, Sam was painfully aware that he was at the absolute mercy of one Jessica Moore; a woman who was completely unable to settle into a new place until everything, and that really meant everything, had been unpacked and put in its place. A woman who -Sam thought bitterly as he pulled a weirdly oblong vase of Jess’s out of its newspaper cradle - he had chosen to date, and was unfortunately very much in love with.  
It wasn’t that Jess was exactly a perfectionist, or even a very clean person. She just happened to have a few quirks about her belongings, like any normal human being, and this quirk was slowly but surely ruining Sam’s life with each box.

Dean had gone back to the house around eleven, and Ava had left not long after, tearfully clinging to her roommate of three years like she’d never see her again. That had set Jess off, and she’s been sniffly for a while, even after Ava was gone.   
She’d perked up again eventually, and now she was in the bedroom distractedly singing along with her iPod while she put together the bedside tables they’d bought.  
Sam had argued that he should be the one building the furniture, and she’d laughed at him and disappeared into the bedroom, muttering something about sexism and gender roles.

“How hard could IKEA furniture be, anyway?” she called.

“Famous last words,” he called back warningly.

“Screw you, Sam Winchester.”

Their neighbors were already well within their rights to hate the newcomers. He’d heard Jess drop one of the panels from the nightstand on the floor three times, already. He was about to be suspicious of how quiet it had become, but then she dropped the screwdriver. It rattled around on the hardwood for years before going quiet.  
He dropped his head back against the wall and popped the tab on another can of Red Bull. He was definitely getting old; in college this stuff could keep him running for days, if need be, and now it just made him shaky while simultaneously upsetting his stomach.

He’d already tried pleading with Jess to let them go to bed, but had been turned down with a ferocious strictness.

He set the can of Red Bull down and sat cross legged on the floor. Using the box cutter, he slit the tape and lazily flipped the top open, sorting through the variously colored throw pillows and dug his way to the bottom, until his fingers found what he was looking for.  
Ellen had gone through a brief knitting phase after she’d moved back into the Roadhouse, and had knitted a Cardinals throw for him. In its center, a sadly misshapen scarlet ‘S’ circled a pine tree, in true Stanford fashion. Or at least an attempt at it.  
He tucked the throw and a couple of the pillows under his elbow and trotted over to a stack of empty boxes they’d been building up over the course of the evening.  
Once he was behind it, he unfolded his body onto the floor and shrugged the throw over his shoulders.  
He was entitled to a nap. He’d earned this. With the promotion at work, he hadn’t had a day off in over a week and a half. It wasn’t more than he could handle, but the last few months had created a challenging shift in his routine, and a much higher stress level that came with the increase in responsibility.

He scrubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands, and the dark spots got bigger and bigger until they took over his vision.  
He didn’t realize he’d fallen asleep until Jess threw the pillow at his face. He opened his eyes and found his blanket gone. Jess had it rolled up in her arms, looking fearsome with her cockeyed top knot and sleep deprived-grimace.

“I love you,” he said hopefully.

She huffed angrily and threw the blanket in his face. He swatted it off as he scrambled to his feet.

“Sam, it took us two months to find this place,” she growled. “I want it put together. I can’t wait.” 

He looked at her, taking in the circles under her eyes. She was desperate, he realized.  
He walked forward and took her arms gently. 

“You’re right. You’ve waited long enough for this.”

She wrenched away from him. 

“I just think it shouldn’t have taken two months.”

He shook his head and moved closer to her.

“No, we’ve waited almost two years.”

She jumped forward to meet him and squeezed his arms, all the anger melting from her face. 

“Oh, no, Sam, I didn’t mean…”

He hugged her. “I’m so sorry that it’s taken so long.” 

“It’s not your fault,” she whispered. “But with Dean…”

“No, this isn’t about Dean. I should have made this happen. A long time ago,” he pleaded. 

“You’re my life, J. I should have done something.”

“Your brother needed you,” she said firmly, but her lip was trembling.

“Yeah,” Sam dropped his head on her shoulder. “He did.”

He swallowed, and she stroked his head, soothing him.

“But I’m still really sorry, okay? I’m sorry,” he murmured.

She collapsed into his arms, trembling with sobs. 

“I’m sorry, I don’t know why I’m crying,” she gulped.

“We’ve been through a lot,” he comforted. “Maybe it’s time that we admitted that.” 

That set her off in another wave of tears.  
When she had regained her composure, she stood up and dropped her arms to her sides.  
He sighed and rubbed his eyes, drawing himself to attention. 

“Where do you want me?”

She huffed, wiping her eyes with her sleeve. “Bookshelves.”

“We already brought them in,” he said.

She smiled and slapped his cheeks lightly with her fingertips.

“Do you see books on them?” 

“I’m sorry. You’re right,” he kissed her and went for the first box.

They worked silently together, crossing the room back and forth with arms full of books.  
After the sixth box of books, he started to question the wisdom of their love of literature for the first time in his entire life.  
They finally collapsed into bed at four, the bed sandwiched by perfectly assembled nightstands.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Second half of what was originally the first chapter, but it got too long. Thanks for reading! no TW in this chapter.

Sam’s debilitating lack of sleep wasn’t helping him at all as he stood at the door to his apartment, fumbling the key in the lock like a moron.  
He’d made it this far. He was carrying more bags than he could have imagined possible, and with those bags, he had made it through the main entrance and up four flights of stairs, and now he was being foiled by his own front door.  
His key jammed, and he swore at it. He couldn’t do anything though, not really, not without dropping everything he was carrying.  
He puffed an exasperated breath out of his lips and set all the bags down, a couple at a time, and very carefully.  
He wrenched the key from the lock, and then tried it again. The lock clicked, but when he turned the knob, it resisted.  
He turned the key again, the other way, and this time when he tried the handle, it gave.

Jess had left the door unlocked again.

He had almost forgotten how much of an issue this habit of hers had been the last time around, and even Ava, who kept mostly to herself and was agreeable with everyone, had sited grievances with her over it when the two of them had been roommates.  
He dropped everything on their small kitchen table in the corner, muttering under his breath. All she had to do was lock the door. It wasn’t that much to ask, and Sam wasn’t up for the idea of a casual Thursday afternoon robbery.

He set himself to work. He’d been back at the house all morning; Dean had endured him patiently while he’d asked a million questions about wine sauce, how to tell if pasta was done cooking, and Dean’s special recipe for seasoning steaks. Together, they’d made no less than five batches of garlic bread, until Sam was able to produce a specimen that wasn’t completely blackened.

Now in his own kitchen, he began recreating the process.

He’d thought through his plan carefully after checking Jess’s schedule to make sure she was working today. His plan was to make her dinner, give her flowers, and ring in the new place properly. They were starting their life together, fresh and new, and that deserved celebration.  
He had a very simple plan, the execution of which was turning out to be more of a challenge than he had anticipated. It had sounded so straightforward when he’d brought it up to Dean. Steaks. Wine. Pasta. 

Of course, as Dean had gently reminded him, he was no expert chef.  
As countering evidence, Sam had presented the case of his Christmas green bean casserole.  
When Dean had bitten his lip in an attempt to remain neutral, the truth about the horrors of his own casserole dawned on Sam, and he saw it with new eyes.  
He dropped a pinch of salt in the pot of water, and went to slice bread. This time, it would be different. This dinner would be no green bean casserole. Not if he could help it.

Halfway through the baguette, he stopped cold as something rustled in the bedroom.

He held the bread knife aloft, listening tentatively for more disturbances, trying to hear anything at all over the thudding of his heartbeat.  
The noise in the bedroom continued, uninterrupted by his notice of it, growing and fading in and out, morphing into altering versions of itself.  
He stepped into the hallway, careful not to step on any creaky floor board, which was hard since this floor was so new to him, but somehow, he managed it.   
The bedroom door was partially open. All the alarms in his head blared at once. They always closed the bedroom door when they weren’t home. It kept the cool air circulating. 

They never failed to close it.   
So, they were being robbed.

Sam backtracked into the kitchen. He laid the bread knife on the countertop like it was a bomb, and went to the knife block for a chopping blade.  
If he lived through this, he was going to bring up the concealed carrier permit thing to Dean again.  
He crept back into the hallway. The footsteps were going across the room. The footsteps were going faster. The footsteps were getting louder.  
The floor squawked suddenly under his own foot, and he jerked back from it.  
The footsteps stopped.  
Silence.  
His water was boiling. He could hear it clacking against the sides of its pot, hissing with steam.  
His pulse roared in his ears.   
The hallway swam in front of him, but he crouched down and pushed forward.  
His lungs stretched and burned as he finally gave them a breath. He plunged into the room.  
Chest first, arms up, he hollered through the door, the sound scraping all the way up his throat as he raised his knife.  
A high-pitched scream collided with his warrior yell, and Jess hurdled herself backwards against the wall and fell to the floor. Her earbuds popped out of her ears as she tangled them in her arms, in her hair, in the scarlet-colored silk strap that slipped down to her elbow.  
They stared at each other. Sam’s shout died on his lips, and he dropped onto the floor. The knife clattered next to him.  
Jess pulled her knees to her chest, her eyes bulging.

“Jess?” he gasped.

“What the hell are you doing?” she shouted. “Why do you have a knife?”

“I thought someone broke in! I thought you were a fucking burglar!” he shouted back.

She curled against the wall, and her trembling fingers clawed at her bra strap. She stared at it like it was going to bite her. She sat up suddenly, wrapping her arms around her body, and Sam realized that other than her half donned lingerie, she was completely naked.

“Oh my god, oh my god, you gotta get out,” she cried, curling her legs under her. “You aren’t supposed to see this.”

“What?” he gasped. “I’ve seen you before.”

He tore his eyes off her and saw the room for the first time. Their bed was buried deep in crimson.  
Rose petals.  
Unlit candles scattered over the nightstand and lined the base of the bed.  
He turned back to his girlfriend. She was ripping tags off of her bra and panties. At her feet, an array of shopping bags littered the floor.

“I thought you were at work,” he said shortly.

Her hand pressed to her chest. 

“I lied to you,” she burst. “Ava took my shift, so I could put all this together for you. We’ve been planning it for weeks.”

She finally got a breath in, and slid her hand to her arm to retrieve her strap. She pulled it back into place and released it with an elastic snap.

“Jess,” he said, before his mind realized that his mouth had taken over. “What are you doing?”

“I wanted to do something romantic! For the first night in our new place!” her eyes welled with tears, and one of them escaped and dropped onto her cheek. Her shoulders   
hitched as the sobs started building. “So I lied, and I went to Victoria’s, and then I went to this like, really naughty store. I’d never been in there before and it was super awkward and weird but I went in anyway, and I went and got flowers and candles and wine,” she pointed at one of the bags in the corner, “and I was going to make chicken cordon bleu and broccoli, and…”

Laughter erupted from Sam’s chest, and rolled out of his control. He dropped his forehead down to the floor, tears dripping off his cheeks, until his entire existence was completely taken over by the roar of laughter.  
He sat up, and saw that Jess had stopped crying to stare at him.  
Somehow, he braved the throes of laughter long enough to pull himself to his feet and deposit the knife on top of the dresser. He grabbed her hand and kissed it. His teeth bumped her knuckles while she stared blankly at him.

“Come here,” he gasped.

She let him drag her into the kitchen, although she did hang back slightly, looking at her boyfriend in terrified wonder.

“Sam, what the hell? I don’t understand…” she was on the verge of tears, again.

His laughter won out over any explanation that tried to work its way to the surface.  
He stood behind her, and positioned her shoulders towards what he wanted her to see.  
The pot of water was boiling over, steam billowed towards the ceiling. She ran forward and turned off the stove, waving her hands to disperse the cloud above it.  
Her face was shining with heat as she turned around, and she saw everything. The roses, the bread, the steaks.  
She gawked at it, but only for a moment, and then she was just as gone as Sam was.  
They collapsed into each other, roaring, Jess with tears rolling down her cheeks now for an entirely different reason.  
He cupped his hand around the back of her neck and pulled her head to his, and kissed her in a collision of teeth and salt water and lipstick. She kissed him back fiercely, wildly, her hair getting in his mouth and in his eyes, and her nose crushing into his cheek.

“You know the best part of this?” she cackled into his collar. 

Something wet splatted against his neck. She was spitting. She always spit when she was laughing hard, and God, it was glorious. He’d never loved spit more.

“What?” he asked.

“We, both, had the same, stupid cliche idea of a romantic evening,” she panted, gasping for air between almost every word.

“Not quite,” he told her solemnly. “I didn’t buy any lingerie to wear for you.” 

She roared at that, her hair bouncing around her head and backwards as she threw her head back. A huge glop of spit landed on Sam’s cheek. He had her arms wrapped around her. She smelled amazing.  
The spit slid down to his jaw, and then dripped off. He didn’t know where it went after that.

“Hey, you said the first night in our apartment,” he finally got out.

“What?” 

“Last night was…”

She shook her head, still laughing. “Everyone knows the night you actually move in doesn’t count.”

He jumped up to sit on the edge of the countertop and pulled her up into his lap. She wrapped her legs around his, staring at him so hard that he thought she would melt his soul.

“Sam Winchester,” she said. “I fucking love how cliche this is. We are fucking perfect.”

“I love you.”

She grabbed his chin and swung his head back and forth, but he didn’t break eye contact with her. 

“I love you,” she answered. 

He kissed her, hard.

“So, we’re cooking together, then?” she jumped down from the counter and turned to face him.

He kissed her nose. “That sounds sexy.”

“Yeah, just like nose kisses,” she grimaced. “Ugh! I snorted some of your spit.”

“Sorry,” he laughed. 

“Anyway, this isn’t gonna be sexy if we cook your way,” she continued, getting a towel to wipe up the water from the overflowed pot on the stove.

“I had help!” he protested, snatching the towel from her.

She made an ‘O’ with her mouth, her eyes sparkling. “You cheater!”

“Hey, I just figured you wanted something edible,” he shrugged. “So, are we making steaks or chicken?”

“Why not both?” she picked up the bread knife and waved it at him. “Start seasoning the meat.”

“I can’t wait to marry you someday,” he murmured.

She laughed. “Shut up, don’t be stupid.”

“I’m serious,” he said. He pulled the steaks out of the bag. “I’m gonna marry you someday.”

She ducked her head. “You have to ask first.”  
He nodded.

“I’m not asking you to propose right this instant!” she exclaimed. “But just know that if I ever feel like you’re taking too long to ask, I’ll take matters into my own hands. Fair warning.”

He chuckled and came forward to kiss her again.

She tenderly pulled his head down onto her shoulder, and kissed the top of his head. She kept talking while she stroked his hair.

“I started writing our wedding vows when we were in junior high,” she confessed.

He jerked his head back up. “What?”

She grabbed his hair and pushed him down. “Shh, put your head back down. I’m a girl, Sam. We do this kind of shit.”

He laughed. 

“We’d already been dating for two years,” she continued, tangling her fingers in his hair. “So, it was obvious. You know? God, I think some of the first stuff I wrote was about promising to make you dinner every single night, and to always support your band...what else, and to always look sexy for you,” she giggled.

“You’ve lived up to that last one,” he told her.

“Don’t make me throw up.”

“Sorry.”

“But let’s be real, that was dumb kid stuff. I’ve kept revising it...over the years.”

“Let’s hear it then,” he said. “Hit me. What’ve you got, Moore?”

She frowned. “Well, see, your band sort of died,” she put her hand over her heart solemnly. 

“Rest in peace, Botox Penguins.”

“Hmmm. Hear, hear.”

“Right. So no more band in the vows.”

“Uh-huh. Go on.”

She scratched her lip. “I’m kind of thinking we could hire Dean to cook for us, so that takes away the always cooking thing. The whole wife-who-always-cooks thing is kind of sexist, anyway.”

He kissed her shoulder.

“The only thing that’s really stuck over the years is not a promise to you, it’s a demand for you to promise something to me,” she said.

“I’m intrigued.”

“Okay,” she pulled back from him and started cutting the bread again. “In my vows, I’ll ask you, before God and witnesses, to promise to never, ever, take a shit with the bathroom door open.”

“What?” he cackled.

“No, I’m really serious about that,” she dropped the knife and shoved him. “Have you smelled your own dumps? You could kill someone, dude.”

“I love you,” he laughed.

“I love you. I always will love you.”

“Me too. Ditto.”

“Seriously?” she groaned. “Ditto?”

He coughed. “Jessica Moore, you’ve got my heart forever, I love you with everything I am.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Better.”

He pointed a finger at her. “So much so, that I’m going to agree to your no-shitting rule right now.”

She clapped her hand over her mouth, then pulled it away to say.

“Then do it. Properly. Right now.”

He raised his right hand.

“Wait, I’m going to go get your Bible,” she said, scrambling out of the kitchen.

“I don’t think I can say ‘shit’ while I’m touching the Bible,” he called after her.

“Improvise,” she shouted back. 

She came back into the kitchen with the leather-bound book. Squaring her shoulders, she held it out to him. He cleared his throat and set his hand on it.

“I, Samuel William Winchester, do solemnly swear to never, ever, uh, release solid waste,”

“Ew, no,” she wrinkled her nose. “Not that.”

“Fine. I solemnly swear to never, ever poo with the portal to the...uh, water closet, open for thine prying eyes to behold,” he said regally.

“You do a terrible British accent,” she sighed.

“Is the lady satisfied?” he asked, ignoring her comment.

She considered for a moment, then nodded graciously. “She is.”  
\----  
“We need to wrap this up,” Sam said. “Charlie lands in two hours.”

“Alright.” Dean held up a clunkily shaped wooden trinket. “Dude. What the hell is this?”

“No idea,” Sam shrugged. “Are we all going out tonight?”

“Up to the girls, probably. Charlie wants to go to the Star Trek bar again.’

Sam sneezed. “Of course she does. God, this is gross. When was the last time we cleaned in here?”

“I think Ellen was the last one to clean it,” Dean observed. “And I think Dad helped her. Oh god. Yeah, some of this dust definitely looks like it could be about eight years thick, don’t you think?”

“Using years as a unit for measuring depth is going to be my new thing,” Sam laughed, then sneezed again. “Maybe we should be wearing masks.”

“Probably. How big do you think our spider colony is down here?”

Sam recoiled. “Dude, don’t.”

“Sorry.”

Dean popped the cap off of the permanent marker in his hand, and for a moment there was no sound except its squeak as he wrote on the side of a box.  
Sam handed him the packing tape. 

“I haven’t seen Charlie in...wow. Since Thanksgiving, right?” 

Dean thought for a second. “Yeah. Wow.”

“Poor Charlie. I can’t imagine, having the person you love on the other side of the globe most of the time.”

“She’s got it tough,” Dean agreed.

He and Dean had been working in the basement storage room all day. It had started as an attempt to collect the rest of Sam’s things for his new apartment, but it had mutated into a cleaning attempt, crossed with a long stroll down memory lane.   
Sam stood and pulled another cardboard box off the shelf by its flaps. A ripping sound accompanied the movement.

“Shit,” he said, quickly trying to readjust his grip on it.

It was too late. He flailed backwards to avoid getting his toes crushed, and the cardboard thudded dully against the rug, leaving him holding only the box’s flap in his hand.

“You good?” Dean asked, scrambling to his feet.

“Yeah, I think so.”

“Anything break?” Dean came over to examine the box.

Sam’s fingers were coated in a grimy film from the box’s decade thick layer of dust. He sneezed again just at the thought of it while he turned the flap over.  
Mom’s handwriting sprawled over it. He caught his breath. He’d seen her writing on three other boxes already today, but it was still jarring to see it. His throat tightened as he traced the loops of the letters with his finger.

“Says ‘Photographs’,” he told Dean. “Mom wrote it.”

Dean sighed and picked the box up. “Okay.”

“Think it needs a new box?”

“Well, you’re holding half of it in your hand.”

“Yeah.”

They sat back down, across from each other, and started picking up the box’s spilled contents.

“Oh my god, Sam, look at your hair,” Dean held one of the photos up.

“Dean, I don’t want to…”

“I’m talking about right now,” Dean teased. “You need a haircut, man.”

“Dude, stop it.”

“We should do something about these, though. Look at this,” Dean held up a photo, his face serious.   
It was the two of them, really small, sitting on a tree branch with Mary.

Sam took the photo and touched Mom’s face gently. She was holding him in one arm, and had a chubby Dean secured against her with the other. He’d been what, one year old in this picture?  
He turned it over and read the date out loud.

“June 3, 1998.”

“Right before she got sick,” Dean murmured. “These shouldn’t be collecting dust in a cardboard box. I remember sitting in this tree. I was so scared we were going to fall out.”

“I don’t remember.”

“You were really little.” 

“I remember this one,” Sam handed him a different print. “This is a good one.”

“We must have kept adding pictures to this box,” Dean commented.

They’d all piled into the Impala and leaned out the windows, arms spread, for a Christmas picture. The boys had both been awkwardly lanky in their early teens. Jo, too. The picture was a vivid tangle of pimples and arms and legs.   
Ellen was laughing, but that wasn’t unusual for her in pictures. To see Dad laughing was another matter. It was a weird thing to behold, Dad, looking somewhere near healthy and happy. They’d used this as their Christmas card that year. There were a couple gap years in the cards; John hadn’t done well keeping up with Christmas cards after Mom had died.  
Sam realized that even though John had neglected a lot of tradition out of drunken forgetfulness, there was also probably a lot of repressed hurt that he’d kept down by steering away from things that used to be filled with Mom’s presence. The car, for example.  
Taking family pictures had come to be a reminder of who was missing. For Ellen, too.  
The two had had each other, though. For a while.

“These aren’t the originals from the photo albums you made, are they? I don’t think I’ve seen these.”

Dean shook his head. “No, those are in albums under the TV upstairs. I haven’t seen these in a while, either.” 

Sam handed him the photo, and he set it in the bottom of the box. 

“Maybe I’ll turn these into another album.”

“You should! The first ones turned out great.”

“You think so?” Dean rolled his shoulders and surveyed their work. “Thanks.”

He sat up straighter, suddenly. “That reminds me. I’ll be right back.”

When Dean came back, he was carrying a huge frame, faced away from Sam.

“This is the surprise I told you I was working on,” he grunted, setting it down. “It’s for your new place.”

He turned it around to reveal three black and white shots of Sam and Jess.

Sam got to his feet. “Dean, this is amazing. Jess’s going to love it.”

Dean grinned. “I hope so.”

“Thank you. So much.”

“So how’s it going, anyway?” 

“It’s good. Really good. I mean, first night was rough. Jess wouldn’t let me go to bed until we unpacked everything. Literally, everything. And broke down the boxes.” 

“She’s a bit type A,” Dean admitted.

“No, Dean, I’m type A. Jess’s in a category all her own.”

“Hey, you picked her.”

Sam brightened. “I didn’t tell you. She put the nightstands together. The ones we picked out on Monday? All alone. She wouldn’t let me help.”

“And?” Dean asked, bending down to rub his leg.

“They’re still standing. She did an amazing job, actually.”

“I would expect nothing less. She wears the pants in the relationship, you know.”

“I can change my own oil!” Sam pointed out.

Dean looked at him silently, amusement flickering over his face.

“But you’re right,” Sam conceded. “Besides, wearing the pants is such an outdated idea.”

“Now you sound like her.”

“I hope so.”

“Beer?” Dean asked.

They made their way upstairs and sat at the kitchen table, elbows only inches apart.

“When are you going to ask her to marry you? You know you want to.”

“I do,” Sam said slowly. 

“That’s a good phrase to practice.”

“Shut up. I do want to marry her. She and I both know that, you know? We even talked about vows the other night.”

Dean put his bottle down and raised his eyebrows. “Really?”

Sam scratched his head and leaned back. “Yeah, but I think we’re going to wait until she’s done with school.”

“Not a bad plan.”


	3. Chapter 3

“Can you see her?” Sam asked, crumpling his program in his hands and leaning forward to the edge of his seat.

“I think I can,” Castiel said, shading his eyes from the direct sunlight over them. “Right there; towards the back, about a third of the way in from the left. Is that her?”

Sam leaned against Castiel’s shoulder, trying to follow the line from his pointing finger. “How can you tell, Castiel?”

Castiel tucked his fingertips into his mouth and shook his head. “I’m not sure, actually.”

Dean rolled his eyes, and Ava caught the look and joined him, grinning. Dean went back to the program in his hands. Trying to spot Jessica in the midst of the mess of crimson caps and gowns and golden tassels in the football stadium below them was an all but hopeless endeavour. 

“Yeah, yeah, that’s her!” Sam cried excitedly.

Castiel grinned. “I thought so.”

“She looks great, doesn’t she?” Sam said dreamily.

“Yeah, she makes a beautiful speck in the crowd, Sam,” Dean said sarcastically, throwing his arm over Castiel’s seatback.

“Rude,” Sam said distractedly, but he was clearly too excited to really make more of a fuss at Dean’s comment.

“It’s too hot,” Ava complained.

“Don’t worry,” Castiel told her. “We only have to sit here for two more hours.”

“He’s been hanging out with us for too long, Dean,” Ava lamented. “Do you hear this sarcasm?”

“Here, you can have this,” Dean handed her his umbrella. 

“No, Dean, I can’t take that from you,” she said. 

“It’s fine. You’re way paler than me, you need it more,” he assured her. 

“Bite me,” she grumbled, but took the umbrella.

They all screamed themselves hoarse when Jessica’s name was called and she strode confidently across the stage, shook Dean Chuck Shurley’s hand, and received her   
diploma.  
Dean thought maybe Sam had cried. Just a little bit.   
Afterwards, it took a considerable amount of time to find Jess in the crowd of families finding their graduates, but then suddenly, there she was, charging for them.   
She kept one hand on her cap; the breeze was picking up into something stronger.   
She sprinted to Sam, curls bouncing over her shoulders as she leapt for him. He barely braced himself fast enough to catch her in his arms. They kissed, and he twirled her in circles, burying his head in his shoulder like he always did.  
Dean sat on the edge of the front seat of the Jeep and watched all of it through his camera, trying to capture the moment, but like the Roadhouse, Jessica and Sam were so special, so familiar to him, that he always felt at a loss when he tried to pull their live moments into still frames. A shot of Jessica’s feet and the hem of her dress, and one of her hair half swept over Sam’s face while she kissed him, one of their eyes as they looked at each other, but none of it quite could encapsulate the moment in Dean’s mind.  
Cas stood at his side, watching the excitement silently, taking it in with a slight smile. Dean wondered if it brought back a memory, or if Cas really was starting to feel deeply attached to all of them. Or maybe he was just being polite.  
Ava hovered awkwardly at Dean’s elbow, and he wrapped one arm around her waist and squeezed while he took the pictures. She wrapped an arm around his shoulders and squeezed back, leaning her head against him and enveloping him in the heavy scent of pot smoke. She let go a few minutes later, it was too hot out. 

“Okay, lovebirds, say cheese,” Dean called. 

Sam and Jess obliged, both of them smiling so big that you would have thought that Jess had won Academy Award for Best Actress.  
Then Cas took the camera, and Jess and Sam stood on either side of Dean for a few pictures, and then they took pictures of just Jessica with her diploma. Jessica picked Ava up for a couple, and Ava laughed and flung her arms out wide while Dean snapped the shot. 

“Everybody!” Jess shouted, so Sam caught someone from the passing crowd and they all stood in the shot together while the spindly-legged teen counted down from three and snapped off a few more pictures. 

“To the Roadhouse!” Sam cried triumphantly.

Jessica and Ava rode with Sam in the Jeep, and Cas and Dean followed closely behind, laughing at the girls’ bobbing heads, waving when the girls turned around in their seats.

When Dean stepped out of Cas’s car in front of the Roadhouse, Jessica had shucked off their ceremonial garb, and she and Ava were shouting the lyrics to a Katy Perry song, hooking their arms with each other as they tumbled out of Sam’s Jeep. 

Jessica had shed her heels, which was probably not the greatest idea; the pavement was hot enough to fry an egg. She howled as her feet touched it, and Ava cried out with her in sympathy and dragged her full speed across the parking lot. 

“I suddenly have a new level of respect for Ava,” Dean told Castiel, pointing at the six inch heels on Ava’s feet. Castiel whistled in agreement.

The guys followed more slowly up to the porch of the Roadhouse, Sam carrying Jessica’s shoes and grinning like an idiot, and Cas and Dean close behind.   
There was an uproarious party waiting for them inside; Dean and Cas had helped decorate earlier this morning, and now everyone they knew was crowded into the Roadhouse, even Mr. Creaser was there, squinting suspiciously at the bunch of balloons over his head.  
Jody Mills kissed Dean’s cheek warmly on her way over to the graduates, and kissed Castiel, too, even though Dean wasn’t completely sure that they’d been introduced. From the look of her, though, she was already at least three drinks in. Cas gawked at her back in surprise as she walked away, making such a comical face that Dean couldn’t help laughing.

“Who was that?” Cas asked.

“The sheriff,” Dean replied simply. “Let’s get a drink.”

Jessica, Ava, and Sam had already been swallowed up by the swarm of guests, so it was easy enough for Dean to find seats at the bar.  
Castiel poured himself a glass of wine and a beer for Dean, and then joined him at the bar stools next to one of the Roadhouse’s regulars.

“Mr. Creaser?” Dean said carefully, making sure to position his stool out of the way of Martin’s arm in case he was startled. 

“Oh, hi, Dean, hi,” he stuttered, but at least he hadn’t thrown his drink at them. 

“Hi. Mr. Creaser, this is my friend, Castiel. Castiel, this is Mr. Martin Creaser.”

Castiel extended his hand, and Martin seized it and pulled Castiel close to him, whispering loudly in his ear.

“They’re here. All of them.”

Cas’s eyes bulged and he tried to pull away from Martin, but Dean smiled reassuringly at him over Martin’s shoulder, so Cas relaxed, hesitantly.

“Who is, Martin?” Dean asked gently. 

“The ghosts. They’ve taken over this place, taken it over. The lights!”

“The lights?” Cas asked.

“Haven’t you seen ‘em flickering?” Martin cried. “Means that there are ghosts.”

“Oh!” Dean said, looking around. Martin was getting overexcited, and if they didn’t calm him  
down soon, the mood of this party was going to change fast.

“Hey, Mr. Creaser,” he said. “I know a way to get rid of ghosts.”

“Do ya? What is it? Tell me quick, Dean boy,” Martin said.

He looked around the bar, trying to find something close at hand that wouldn’t cause Ellen to kill him if it went missing. 

“Salt,” he said, shrugging at Cas. Cas got up and picked up the salt shaker on the table behind him, raising his eyebrows. Dean nodded. What the hell. Salt.

“Yes, of course,” Martin muttered. Cas handed him the shaker, and Martin clapped his hand firmly on Castiel’s shoulder. “You’re a good one, sonny. Salt, okay.” 

He turned the shaker over and shook it onto his shoulders, and relaxed, closing his eyes.

“There. They can’t get me now.” He opened his eyes again and looked at Cas, still gripping his hand. “Cassie, you keep an eye on this one, here. Dean’s a troublemaker.”

“Yes, sir,” Cas grinned. “I will. He sure is.” 

The rest of the party was uneventful for the most part, and every now and then Dean would look up from his conversation and watch Sam and Jess. They were disgustingly adorable.

“Hey kiddo,” Ellen said, leaning over the bar and squeezing Dean’s hand. Her hands were wrinkled and slippery wet from washing dishes. The Roadhouse was officially closed, and the majority of the guests had gone home. 

Dean looked up at Sam on the other side of the room, his arms around Jessica’s waist from behind while she talked to Jo. Sam had his face buried in Jessica’s hair, and they were swaying slowly back in forth to the Bowie song that was playing.

“Does your brother have a proposal plan yet?” Ellen asked, handing him a dripping plate. 

“No, not that I know of.” 

“Better happen soon,” Ellen grumbled. “They’ve only been dating since middle school. It’s about damn time.”

“Did you know Dad was going to ask you?” 

“MMmhmm, sure did.” 

“What about Jo’s dad?”

“Bill? I didn’t know. I was ass-deep in finals. I was a little distracted. Hey, look,” she jerked her head towards the pool table. Cas stood with his arms crossed over his chest, nodding attentively while Rufus said something to him, waving his hands and pointing at something that Ellen and Dean couldn’t see. The two man laughed uproariously, and Sam, Jess, and Jo turned at the sound.

“Look at our men, gettin’ along,” Ellen praised. 

“He’s not…” Dean began. “Ellen…”

“You know what I mean. Castiel, he’s a good addition to this little group of misfits.”

“Yeah. I’m glad we have him,” Dean agreed.

“He needed you, you know. Being new in town is hard,” Ellen said wisely. 

“Yeah.”

“Hope he sticks around.”

He thought maybe he heard something more in her tone, but he couldn’t be sure. Best to just move on and forget about it. 

\----  
They were all seated around Dean and Sam’s big table, and Ellen was pouring wine.  
Dean fidgeted with his ring under the table, the one that Mom had worn, the one he’d been wearing on his right hand since the second his finger was big enough to keep it from falling off. He spun it to the right, around three times, then back the other way.  
He slid it off, carefully. It was harder to take off now than it had been in high school. His fingers were bigger. He tapped its edge on his leg brace, bouncing out a nervous rhythm with it.  
A warm, rough hand found his under the table. Cas. He was smiling. 

Dean pushed his chair back and stood as Ellen sat back down in her own seat next to Rufus.

“I just want to make this official, everyone,” he said. 

Jo snorted into her wine.

“Yeah, can it, Harvelle,” Dean told her lovingly. “I know you guys already have bets, so go ahead and settle it now.”  
Jess collected a good fifty bucks, from what Dean saw. “Anyway, yeah. So Castiel came into our lives at Christmas,”

“Hey, I met him before that,” Jess piped in. 

“Seriously, Jess?” Dean dropped his arms to his sides in exasperation and looked around the table. “Anyone else have anything to pitch in before I continue? You know, because this is important?”

Sam raised his hand, grinning mischievously.

“No,” Dean pointed. Sam pouted, but was silent. 

“Geez. Anyway,” Castiel reached for his hand, and Dean took it, feeling a little silly, but pressed on. “So, you all -at one point or another-,” he looked pointedly at Jess, who winked at him, “met Castiel before the end of last year.”

Castiel was watching him with a sort of familiar fondness on his face, the corners of his eyes crinkling up. 

“He’s a good part of our group. We wouldn’t be the same without him.”

A general chorus of “hear, hear”.

“And, uh, I figured that this was a good time to announce it, with Jo being home, and Charlie. So here it is: we’re dating.” 

It was official.  
They toasted to the relationship, to Castiel’s health, to Jessica graduating. Jo had an odd habit of creating toasts out of utter nonsense, so they followed her lead and toasted to Jessica’s furniture building abilities, which she was delighting in retelling anytime there was more than a five second break in the conversation. 

“That was six months ago!” Sam protested. They ignored him.

Dean insisted they toast to Jo’s new haircut, and Sam led the toast to Ellen’s spaghetti, which everyone agreed was the toast they should have started with.  
Dean toasted to the painkillers he was on for his recent appendectomy, and their delightful effectiveness, as well as their disappointing intention to keep him away from alcohol and forcing him to toast with water, which as everyone knows, is incredibly bad luck.  
Jessica proposed a toast to the nightstands again, but was shut down.  
Ellen toasted to Castiel’s jacket, and Dean toasted to Castiel’s butt, and then to the impressive shade of red Castiel turned only seconds later.  
Sam followed Dean’s example and toasted to Jessica’s butt, and then Jessica toasted to Ava’s butt, much to Sam’s disappointment.  
Ellen complained grumpily that no one had toasted to her butt, and Dean remedied that complaint for her quickly, choking on his water as he did so.   
Castiel begged them all to stop, because he was laughing and couldn’t stop, but there wasn’t much they could do to help him, even after the proverbial ass-kissing ended.

\---

“Breakfast,” Dean said, dropping the plate of eggs in front of Castiel. 

Castiel raised his head from the tabletop, snorting in surprise, and blinking dumbly up at Dean. 

“Huh?” 

“You have to eat, you have a meeting with the chief in an hour, remember?”

Castiel dropped his head back onto the table. 

“It’s not breakfast if it’s three in the afternoon,” he said grumpily.

“Hey, it’s breakfast for you.” 

The crazy, sparkle-infested life they’d lived in the spring, when they were catching up on all the sex they’d missed while Dean was recovering from surgery, and when there had been birthdays and graduation parties, and weekends away was over. Real life and a real, day-to-day relationship life was setting in. Dean and Castiel weren’t a new couple anymore, which could have been disappointing. Not to Dean. For him, their relationship had had such a rough start; from Cas’s hesitation to commit, to his surgery, to his own inability to trust, which he found was changing with every conversation and every kiss. He trusted Cas. Cas was learning to trust him, too, he’d opened himself up to Dean to come into the relationship, with the fear that everything he’d worked for his whole life would be swept away if he split his attention, but they were making it work, and not in a way that limped along, but that felt solid and steady. They were developing a rhythm, a pattern.   
Dating a doctor had opened Dean’s eyes to the atrocious chaos that was being on call, and he himself was working odd hours at the paper, coming at every beck and call from the editor, Garth Fitzgerald. Dean’s phone had become all but glued to his hand in the few months he’d been doing this job; Garth was fond of reminding him that news waited for no one, which meant that no matter the time of day, Dean had to be prepared to drive across town and shoot anything and everything happening in the city, from car accidents to 5k races to fluff pieces about cats with three legs.   
Cas was finally moving, slowly but surely, scooping the eggs into his mouth.

“Coffee,” he slurred pleadingly. 

“Coming up.” Dean pulled himself out of his chair at Castiel’s tiny kitchen table, kissed his boyfriend’s unruly dark mop of hair.

His phone buzzed while he was waiting for the pot to brew. He had the rare, yet pleasant surprise of it being not a job, but his brother.  
-I need to talk to you, can you meet me at the house in fifteen minutes?

“Babe,” he called. “If I leave you here alone will you promise to go to your meeting and not go back to bed?”

He got a grunt of affirmation, which would have to do. He poured Cas’s coffee and one to go for himself, kissed Castiel’s egg-tinted mouth, and went out the door.  
He had to unlock the door when he got back to the house; really, it was some sort of miracle that he hadn’t been robbed since Sam had moved out. Dean was awful at remembering to lock doors.

“Hey,” he called as he came in.

“In here,” Sam’s voice answered.

Super helpful, Sam. Dean didn’t know what Dad had been thinking when he designed the place, but the setup of the halls and rooms on the main floor created a fucking echochamber.

“Marco,” he called, tossing his keys in the bowl by the door. 

“Polo.”

So, kitchen. Probably.

“Marco,” one more time for good measure.

“Seriously? Polo.” 

Dean dropped his bag in a chair, grinning, and sat next to Sam.

“How’s it going?” 

Sam shuffled his hands together nervously.

“Um, sit down.”

Dean frowned. “Um, last I checked, I was sitting down.”

Sam glanced over at him. “Oh. Right, okay.” 

Dean laughed nervously. “Sam, what the hell’s going on?” 

Sam scratched at his jaw, smiling.

“Holy crap, you did it, didn’t you?”

Sam smiled a little bigger.

“Sam!” 

Sam reached into the pocket of his jacket and pulled something out and put it on the table. 

It was a small velvet box.

“Let me see it,” Dean begged. 

Sam painstakingly opened the box and handed it to Dean. 

“Sam, it’s fucking gorgeous,” he said, cradling the small jewelry box in his hands. The diamond ring smiled up at him. “Ellen was right.”

Sam’s eyebrows shot up. “What?”

“Ellen said you were thinking about it,” Dean said absently, turning the box around in his hands so that he could see the ring from every angle. He whistled softly.

Sam looked panicked. “Oh god, do you think Jess knowns?” 

“I’m sure she doesn’t, calm down. She’s going to be surprised, I promise,” Dean said hurriedly. 

“When are you going to…?”

Sam bit his nails and took the box back, closing it and returning it to his pocket. “I don’t know, yet. I keep trying to think of something special, like, really special, and not cliche. I’m not going to do it until I feel like it’s perfect.”

Dean nodded. “That’s very Sammy of you.”

Sam glared at him.

“Not in a bad way! Do you have any ideas yet?” 

It turned out that Sam did have ideas. About twelve billion of them. 

Dean got up and got them beers quietly about thirty minutes into Sam’s rambling, nodding encouragingly to each of the ideas. They all sounded perfect, all betrayed the depth of knowledge and understanding Sam had of his girlfriend. 

He fondly considered back to when Sam had first come into the Roadhouse after school, twelve years old, hand in hand with a blonde girl with braces who was just a few inches taller than him. He’d used all of his allowance for the entire month to buy her a strawberry milkshake and a plate of fries, even though Ellen had never asked either of the boys to pay for a cent of the food they’d eaten under the Roadhouse roof.   
Dean had just started working the afternoon shift, and he’d snuck out of the kitchen every few minutes, careful not to embarrass Sam or let the girl catch him looking. Sam had caught him looking once, and instead of trying to make Dean go away like he’d expected, Sam had raised his eyebrows in questioning hope, and Dean had realized with fierce, big-brother pride, that Sam was asking for Dean’s approval of the girl. He’d given little Sammy a huge thumbs up, a sentiment about Jessica that eleven years later, he still felt pretty strongly about.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TWs below.
> 
> Also. I lied earlier, about nothing changing or getting cut. There's a small detail that changes in this chapter to better allow for a future scene. Bonus points if you can spot it (if you've read both versions).

Sam came home from work the day of the engagement party to a space that had more resemblance to a demolished fairy factory than to his own apartment.   
The entire living room was covered in...girl. Cosmetic samples, nail polish, and dresses were strewn across the carpet with no semblance of order whatsoever.  
In its epicenter, Ava was sitting cross-legged on the floor, leaning over Jess’ leg with a small makeup brush in her hand.

“Okay, let’s try this one,” she said, holding up a small black case for Jess’ inspection.

“Hey, honey,” Jess said to Sam closing her eyes for Ava. “Okay, hit me.”

“Don’t hit my fiance, Ava,” Sam warned, bending down and kissing Jess’ head. She reached up and patted his cheek.

“Har, har, har,” Ava muttered, her tongue in her cheek. “J, you gotta quit moving.”

“Sorry,” Jess said.

Sam rubbed the back of his head and scanned his surroundings. 

“Do most girls, uh, make this much…”

Ava lowered her brush and turned on him daringly. “Make this much what?” 

“Mess,” he finished meekly.

“No,” the girls said in unison.

Ava went back to Jess’ face, and Sam went into the kitchen for a beer.

“Did you see Dean today?” Jess called.

He wrenched the top off of his beer. “Yep.”

“And? He coming tonight?”

“Yeah, and he’s bringing Cas,” he sighed.

Jess got up and came into the kitchen and leaned in the doorway. On one eyelid, she was sporting a shimmery pink color, and on the other, a dark brown.

“Which one?” she asked, closing her eyes and letting him look.

“Which one do you like?” he asked.

She opened her eyes and winked at him. “Good answer, babe. You’re gonna be so good at this marriage thing.”

He smiled. “Kiss?” 

She gave it, and took his beer. 

“So he's bringing Cas, huh?” she asked.

“Yeah. I guess they're trying to get back together, make things work. Dean said they're coming together as friends.”

"Whatever they are now, I hope they stick it out. They're good together.”  
\----  
Jess was training for her race. A marathon. Dean tried to tell her she was crazy, and asked her if she was being forced to run it. At gunpoint maybe? How much was she being paid? Oh, she was paying to run 30 miles?  
It’s not 30, Jess pointed out.

“Tomato, potato.”

She hated it when he said that.  
Everyone did. And he got it. It was damn stupid. But it gave him a stupid satisfaction that fluttered lightly in his chest.  
With two weeks left before the race, the whole family had gotten involved in getting Jess ready to cross the finish line.   
Dean could hear them all chattering in the Roadhouse’s parking lot. Sam was revving the engine of Ellen’s pickup, summoning him to join them.  
He thought briefly about the Impala, parked in the garage of their house. No one had driven the car in years. It made him feel bad, but there was no one to drive her. Sam had his Jeep, and Dean hadn’t felt comfortable enough to drive since his car accident five years ago.  
He sighed and ground the butt of his cigarette into the cement and used the wire fencing around the basketball court to pull himself to his feet. 

“You stink,” Sam muttered at him, handing him the stopwatch.

Dean ignored him and climbed into the truck’s passenger seat. They’d been fighting for a couple weeks now; Cas had gotten too drunk at the engagement party, and Dean wasn’t sure what he’d said to Sam, but it must have been bad. Cas couldn’t remember, and felt awful, and Sam wouldn’t tell Dean what it was that had been said.   
Jess stood beside his door, shaking her legs out and grinning.   
He leaned out the window and she fist bumped him.

“How far are we going?” he asked her.

“You mean, how far are you going to ride comfy on your ass while I pound pavement?” 

“How far,” he grumbled.

She held up all her fingers, and then all of one hand. Fifteen. 

“Should I play Eye of the Tiger to keep you motivated the last couple miles?” he asked.

She rolled her eyes.

“That joke hasn’t been funny for the last, what, three weeks?” Sam said from the driver’s seat. 

“Let it go,” Jess told him, then stage-whispering to Dean, said, “I think you’re funny.”

“Maybe you should dating my brother, not me,” Sam complained loudly.

Jess stuck out her tongue. “Ew.”

“Hey!” Dean whined.

“Are we going or not?” Jess asked. 

“Ellen?” Dean called back behind them.

“Ready, set,” she shouted hoarsely. 

The air horn blared, and Jess took off.

“So, what were you saying about me being disgusting?” Dean asked out the window as Sam eased the truck out alongside her.

“It would be like going out with my brother,” she grimaced. 

“By relation that would make Sam your brother, too.”

“You know what I mean.”

“I do. Just giving you a hard time.”

Sam piped up. “Be quiet and let my fiance run.”

“Oooh, he said the f word’,” Jess laughed. “He’s jealous.”

Sam’s lips went into a thin line, and Dean closed his mouth. Jess wasn’t looking, but after a few steps, she picked up on the tension. 

“It’s a joke, babe,” she called to him. “Let’s not do this.”

He nodded and turned the radio up. 

Dean and Jess exchanged quick glances, but looked away from each other before Sam could notice.

Twelve miles in, Sam thumped Dean’s shoulder lightly with the back of his hand. Dean jumped.

“Sorry,” Sam said. 

“What?”

“I wanna run with her, the last few miles,” Sam said.

Jess looked up, her face red. 

“What are you guys talking about?” she panted.

“Nothing,” Dean said. “Focus! You’re killing it.”

She waved and ducked her head back down. 

“Run with her tomorrow,” Dean said to Sam. His heart was pounding, though. It wasn’t the first time this had happened.

“No, she needs a partner for a couple miles. You drive,” Sam said firmly. They locked eyes.

Breathe, Dean told himself.

“No,” he said. 

Maybe switching tactics would work. Just flat out, no. Not I can’t, or I haven’t driven in two years, or you know that you’re being unreasonable. Just, no. Maybe he could make himself sound more dominant.

“Yes,” Sam argued, and Dean held his breath. 

“No,” he repeated more firmly. He turned back to Jess.

“You go, girl!” he called to her, forcing cheer into his voice.

She pumped her fist in the air and picked up her speed.

“Come on, Dean,” Sam pressed.

“No! Sam, she’s doing fine.”

Good. Make it about Jess. 

“What?” Jess shouted.

“Nothing!” he shouted back. 

She looked confused.

“Don’t stop!” he yelled. 

“Are you guys fighting?”

“No!” 

Sam hit the brakes.

“Get out,” he said.

Dean pressed himself into his seat. “Sam, what the fuck?”

Jess had stopped and looped back around, and was leaning into Dean’s window. 

“What’s going on? We’re almost there!”

“Want to run with you,” he muttered, looking at his lap. 

“Aww, that’s sweet, babe,” she smiled. “What about the truck?”

“I wanted Dean…”

“What?” Jess stiffened.

“You could come back for it,” Dean suggested quickly. “I could sit here, wait for you guys to wrap up.” 

Jess nodded cheerfully. They both looked at Sam.

“Okay,” he said.

“Come on, hurry up,” Jess urged. She gave Dean’s fingers another squeeze before letting go and jogging out in front of the truck.

Sam turned off the engine and flung the keys at Dean.

Dean crouched down and picked them up where they fell on the floor at his feet. When he came back up, Jess was bent over double a few hundred feet ahead.

He threw his door open and trotted as quickly as he could to them. Sam was down next to her, rubbing her back and talking urgently to her.

“What happened?” Dean shouted.

“I’m okay,” Jess gasped.

Her shoulders were heaving roughly, and she was making rough choking sounds. “Can’t breathe.”

She dipped forward, and her hands and knees hit the road.

“Woah, woah,” Sam went down with her and grabbed her face in his hands. “Okay. You can breathe. In, out. Slow. Come on babe,” 

She jerked roughly, her mouth open like a fish.

“Jess?” Dean cried.

“Start the truck,” Sam yelled at him.

Dean fumbled the keys out of his pocket. The trees slid past him and the truck slid forward until he was upon it. He wondered if he’d run.

He started the truck and shifted into drive, sucking in as much as air as he could get.

He let the truck roll up to them, and Sam lifted Jess into the truck’s bed.

“Go!” he shouted. 

“I can’t!” Dean screamed. “You have to drive! You know you have to.”

Sam looked back and forth between the truck cab and his girlfriend for a few seconds, then jumped out of the back and ran around to the front. Dean slid quickly across the seat to get out of his way.

“I can’t fucking believe you,” Sam growled under his breath, then slammed his foot on the accelerator.

Dean twisted in the seat and reached his arm out the back window. 

“Jess?”

She grabbed his fingers and squeezed.

“Breathe,” he yelled at her. He couldn’t see her face.

Her other hand went up, a shaky thumbs up.

Two miles later, she let go of his hand and sat up. Her lips were faintly blue, and her eyes were wide. 

“Jess?” Dean asked anxiously.

She smiled weakly, and inhaled deeply, to show him, then coughed.

“You good?” 

She nodded.

Sam watched them in the rear view mirror, but he didn’t slow down.

“We need to go to the hospital,” he said when they were helping her down out of the truck bed. By then her lips were pink again, and she was breathing calmly.

Dean felt the cold sweat on her arms as she balanced on him to climb down.

“No,” she said firmly. “I’m fine.”

“You almost stopped breathing!” Sam cried, gripping her arm.

“First of all, no,” she said. “I didn’t ‘almost stop breathing’. I just...was having a hard time.”

Sam handed her a water bottle.

“What happened?” he asked.

“You guys fucking gave me a panic attack!” she shouted, throwing the water bottle back at him.

The guys both stared at her.

“What?” Dean asked.

“You were fighting, and it freaked me out!” she whimpered, her eyes flooding with tears.

“We weren’t…” Sam began.

She picked up her water bottle, shaking her head. 

“Jess….” Dean started.

She shook her head and headed for the porch of the roadhouse. 

“Don’t follow me,” she called over her shoulder.   
\-----

The apartment was like a slightly shifted reality in the middle of the night. The moon cast a weird, greenish blue glow over the carpet of the living room, which buzzed with electric silence. He could hear the overhead fan running in the bedroom, droning in a monotonic hum that made the whole place instantly sleepy. It smelled like one of Jess’ many candles in here; a kind of warm, fruity smell. Apple, maybe.  
She lit candles when she was hoping to get laid. The candle smelled like it was still lit. He could see the light from it wavering, now that he looked, down the hall in the bedroom.  
A sense of eager urgency overtook him, but he didn’t move. It was such a weird, twisty joy in is gut that he felt the need to relish in it, even if just for a moment.  
Sam dropped his keys into the bowl by the door and watched the candle flicked on the walls.  
He’d taken the night shift instead of audit, and so instead of his normal bedtime of seven am, he was home at normal human hours.  
He knew Jess was still awake, lying under that fan, waiting for him. She knew he was coming home. He would get to see her; he’d been looking forward to it the entire drive home.  
He called for her softly, but didn’t get a reply. Please don’t be asleep, not yet.  
She wasn’t in the bedroom, either. He sat in the pale candlelight on the edge of the bed, in the epicenter of the apple smell.  
He shucked off his shoes and tie, and then went and knocked on the bathroom door. There was light streaming out from underneath of it. Thick, and yellow. 

“Babe, I’m home,” he whispered. He smirked. “Are you taking a shit?”

He hoped to get a rise from her. No luck. She knew him too well.

He leaned his head on the doorframe and knocked again. His eyes were feeling gritty already. 

“Sam.”

The voice was strained, urgent. He could barely hear it. That voice wasn’t Jess. He didn’t know the voice.  
He did know the voice. It was Jess.

“Sam, come in here.”

He was opening the door, and she was still begging, her voice louder, now. 

“Sam. Please.” 

She didn’t get up. He looked at her, and couldn’t move, and then she said his name again and he grabbed her arms and lifted her up towards him.

“What’s wrong? Jess. Tell me.”

She was sobbing silently when she collapsed against him, and he shouted in panic as they went down together, clutching her shoulders and trying to twist her around so he could see her face.

“Sam,” she cried. 

She was shaking, barely holding onto him, like she didn’t have the strength to even wrap her hands around his arms.  
He took her face in his hands. 

“You have to tell me what’s wrong,” he said, urgently.

She pointed at the bathroom. “I think I’m dying.” 

Her eyes rolled backward, and he shouted her name, trying to take in all the blood on the floor, on the toilet, on her legs.  
She started sobbing wildly while he called 911 from the bedroom, and he sprinted down the hallway back to her. He almost slipped in the blood. There was so much blood.  
Four and a half minutes for an ambulance. He ripped a towel down from its hook on the back of the door. It fell on him and he wrestled it away. Jess screamed. Sam applied pressure to the blood with the towel.

Why hadn’t he tried to stop the bleeding earlier? The towel quickly turned purple, blue and red make purple. Dark purple, almost black. It took over the whole towel. His hands turned red, not purple.

“I’m dying, I think I’m dying.”

“Stop,” he grunted. He gripped her knee and pushed the towel harder. She squeaked, curling in on herself.

“Hold me,” she cried. “Shit, I’m so scared.” 

“I have to stop the bleeding,” he told her.

“It’s inside, that won’t help,” she laughed. “It’s on the inside.” She was crying and laughing, at the same time. “You can’t stop it. It’s inside. Not outside.”

He stared at her blankly. “I have to stop it.”

“You can’t. I’m dying,” she laughed.

He pulled her against him. 

“No, you’re not. You’re going to be fine. You’re okay. The ambulance will be here soon, we’re going to get you help,” he said. He took her face in his hands. She was trembling, on the verge of losing consciousness again. 

“Hey,” he slapped her gently. She looked at him. “You’re not dying. You’re okay. Okay? Say it.”

“Sam…”

“Jess, say it.”

She bit her lip and nodded slowly. “I’m okay.”

“Good girl. You’re okay.”  
============  
He held her, afterwards.  
The hospital had gotten the bleeding to stop, she’d had surgery, and she was awake now.  
She was awake.  
He sat on the bed next to her. She had her head on his shoulder. He couldn’t see her face.  
Her hair was in a ponytail, still, they hadn’t touched it when she’d gotten here. It wasn’t a priority. She still had blood in her hair.  
He had blood on him, too. He hadn’t noticed, until now, but he supposed it made sense.  
He was holding her hand. He leaned forward and kissed it, making the thin, papery sheets make crinkly noises. She jumped a little, and looked up and stared at him. He could see her face.

“Hey,” he smiled.

She tried to smile, but started crying instead. He laid down with her, and she curled against him, sobbing. 

“You need to sleep,” he murmured.

“I’m so scared.”

“You’re okay, you’re okay.”

“The doctors didn’t say that.”

“Because they don’t know anything yet. You’re just fine. I’m right here.” 

She didn’t move. Sam closed his eyes and kissed her hand again.

“Dean’s in the waiting room,” he said. “And Ava. Can they come see you?”

She shook her head no, then laid still again. 

“I’m going to fill them in, then,” he said. “Okay? I’ll be back before you know I’m gone.”

He slid out from under her, but she reached out and grabbed his hand in a deathgrip.  
He sat back down immediately and pulled her against him. She wrapped her arms around his waist and clung to him.

“It’s…” his words died on his lips.

He had been about to say it was okay, but of course that was a lie.

“I have to go talk to Dean, babe,” he said. “I’ll be right back.” 

She let go, finally. 

“Come back.”

“I promise,” he said forcefully. “I’m coming back.” 

She watched him go.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: panic attacks, conflict/fighting, difficulty breathing, blood, emotional distress due to medical trauma, uterine hemorrhaging (similarities to miscarriages)


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TWs at the end, as always.

A really weird joke. Dead, dead, dead.   
Joke.  
He looked at Dean, and he was going to say that it was a joke, but his mouth wasn’t moving, and his brain wasn’t moving, and nothing was moving.   
Joke. Dead, dead, dead. Jess. Jess. His Jess. Dead.   
Joke.  
Dean’s hands were on his arm. Someone else was touching him. Cas. Probably Cas.  
He didn’t know, but no one else had been in the room, so it was definitely Cas. Or maybe it was Ava? Someone was crying, maybe it was Ava.   
Was she in the room? She probably was. He couldn’t remember, probably because Jess. Dead.   
It was a joke.   
Dean was next to him, holding his hand, holding his arm.  
Sam looked at Dean, and god, he should probably be feeling something right now, feeling really upset, and he did, sort of, but he didn’t, either.   
He felt very still.   
Everything was still, and quiet, like nothing on earth had ever moved before. It would probably never move again.   
She’d been here, just a minute ago, he’d been talking to her. She was gone.  
His hair was still wet, because he’d taken a shower. But that probably didn’t matter. It was cold, and dripping on his ears.

“Jess is dead,” he told Dean. 

Dean was there, Dean should know.   
Dean was there, and Dean didn’t go away, and so, following that logic, when Sam finally felt something, Dean was there.   
Dean was there, and they were sitting on the couch back at the house, and it was too quiet, and then Sam was screaming, clawing at his chest and at the floor, and he couldn’t see. Dean was holding his arms, but Sam threw them off, screaming and screaming, and he flailed his arms until his hand scraped against something solid, and he picked it up and threw it, and it smashed against the wall into a million pieces.  
Jess was dead.  
\-------  
Sam crossed his legs under him and put Jess’s vase back in the box. He had been so mad when he’d taken this vase out of the box; he was mad that Jess was making him stay up to unpack the apartment, and now he was putting the vase back in the box, wrapping the newspaper around it again, and he wasn’t angry, he was just empty.  
He folded down the flaps of the box and taped it shut, then crossed the room and put the box in the corner with the others.   
The only thing left to pack was the bedroom. Dean was finishing up in the kitchen, just a couple more boxes, and they’d bury Jess’s things in the basement storage room with Mom and Dad’s stuff, like they’d buried Jess and Mom and Dad.   
He stood in the doorway of the bedroom for a few minutes before he went in, looking over it one last time, trying to remember the perfect little life he’d gotten to live for a few months in this room.  
He ran his hand over the top of the nightstand on his side of the bed. A little velvet box was inside this drawer. It was empty. The ring was six feet under. They’d buried her with it. Like that would do any good.  
He could have taken it back to the jeweler’s later, gotten his money back. He could have taken the cuff links back, too...the ones she'd bought him for Christmas, the ones he'd worn to her funeral. He didn't have the heart.

The apartment was a jigsaw puzzle that had never been completed, and now the pieces were painted over in a solid black. There was no picture left to create; the puzzle was ruined, there was nothing to do with the pieces but to throw them away, or collect them as little souvenirs of something that could have existed.

\------  
Knowing that you were about to cry was not unlike realizing that you were on the brink of an explosive bowel movement. Your body only gave you so much time before it released. It didn’t care if its victim was ready or not.  
Grief was even worse. Crying, at least, was often a reaction to something in the present; but when it was grief, the time that it would choose to wash over the griever was completely unpredictable. That’s what they all were now; grievers.   
Other cultures were better at mourning a death. Veils. Black clothes. Tearing clothes, screaming and weeping in the streets during the funeral procession.

They’d all been silent. Worn suits. Smiled and shook hands.  
Until grief decided it was tired of being held in like a bad meal, and spewed itself outwards.   
The grief had lunged upward in Dean’s gut twelve minutes ago. He’d locked the bathroom door, just in case. In case Sam woke up.   
He turned the water on, and the shower head fizzed and spit until the water was pouring out at full force. It was just a matter of waiting for the water to heat up, now. Their water heater was slow, he told himself. He had a few minutes to wait.  
He’d locked the door.   
The water was running. It was loud; the faucet was still spitting.   
Dean went down on the floor, his towel wadded under him, pressing tightly into his stomach until it felt like it would puncture through his abdomen and emerge from his back.  
His head throbbed and echoed every time he sobbed, and he pulled his towel out from under him and stuffed it into his face. He couldn’t wake up Sam.  
He curled his knees up into his chest and forced his face into the fabric of the towel until he heard his nose make a popping noise, but it wasn’t enough, even though whatever he’d done to his nose had made it hurt like hell and turned his vision red.  
His toes found the white, decorative runner that went around the base of the wall, and he drove his feet against it, pressing every bit of energy he had out of his body. There were fibers from the towel in his teeth; he had wadded the corner of it into his mouth and was chomping down on it vehemently, saliva and tears seeping into the fabric.  
Someone tapped on the door, but he didn’t get up. He couldn’t. He wasn’t telling his body what to do anymore. He was just along for the ride. It turned him over so that his face was in the floor again. It didn’t take long for the floor to be tepidly sticky against his cheek. Cas...why was Cas here? was knocking on the door again, softly requesting to be let in.   
Dean couldn’t. He couldn’t get off of this floor, and he couldn’t stop crying long enough to answer, to tell Cas to go away. He didn’t want to stop crying.  
A cool draft blew over him as Cas opened the door, and then closed it again.

“I locked that!” Dean bawled, not moving his head.

“I found a key on top of the door frame,” Cas said.

Dean scrambled on all fours to the toilet and vomited into the bowl. Nothing but bile and water came up.   
Cas rubbed his back until he was done heaving and his ribs had started aching, and then sat behind Dean, sliding down with his back against the wall of the bathtub. He took Dean’s shoulders and pulled him into his arms.   
Dean didn’t resist.

“I can’t breathe,” he wheezed, clawing his fingers into Cas’s shirt until he had a fistful of it.

“Yes, you can,” Cas soothed. “Breathe.”

“Jessica,” Dean began, trying to explain. He lost the words. 

“Shhhh.” Cas pulled him closer until Dean’s head was crushed against Cas’s, and the other man’s breath was hot and loud in Dean’s ear. 

He curled into the embrace, wrapping his arms around Cas’s waist.   
He would have to cry for days to empty the agony out of his gut, but no matter how much he’d cried recently, it wasn’t getting easier. He didn’t know how long he could last at this level of pain; he wanted it to be as unreal as it felt, but it was fucking real.   
He couldn’t cry all the time, because of Sam. Sam had cried, too, but it was different, and Dean didn’t know what to do. He’d held Sam, and sat outside of his bedroom door when Sam wouldn’t let Dean hold him anymore.   
He’d let Sam drink.  
After Dad, they’d kind of sworn to never use alcohol the way Dad did, but Dean hadn’t been able to bring himself to deny Sam anything; not the way he’d been on Tuesday.  
He could have handled Sam screaming again, or breaking more glasses. The quiet, still Sam, who sat still on the couch and didn’t cry or speak, that was what Dean couldn’t take. So when Sam’s energy had come around again, and he was screaming at Dean, and he’d broken Mom’s coffee mug, Dean hadn’t denied him the alcohol.

'I want to forget that I know she’s dead.' Sam, in endless, guttural refrains. Over, and over, and over. He would say that, and then nothing. It cycled viciously. 

Silence. Drinking. Want to forget. Silence. Drinking.

Dean had brought him water, he’d tried to make him eat. He’d cried with him, but mostly he’d tried to hold it together, because that was what Sam needed. He had to keep it together, so he cried when Sam wasn’t looking, or when he was too gone to notice that Dean was crying. 

Cas smelled like apricots and cyprus. Dean buried his face against Cas’s chest and squeezed his waist, needing to touch him, and to be held, and Cas sat with him and held him until he’d stopped crying.  
The water was still running, and Sam might wake up soon.

“Shower,” he said hoarsely, sitting up and pushing his palms down his face to dry them.

Cas sat up and helped him dry his face. 

“Charlie’s here, she’s going to make you guys something to eat. I’ll wake up Sam. You take your shower, and then you’re going to eat, okay?”

“Okay.”

Cas stood up and reached out his hands. “Come on.” 

He slumped against the bathtub for a second, then took Cas’s hands and stood up. 

“Good,” Cas said. “I’m going to get you a clean towel, take your clothes off and get in.” 

His pajama bottoms seemed to want to tie themselves in knots around his legs, but he finally wrestled them off, slipped out of his boxers and t-shirt, and stepped into the shower. The hot water was comforting, and he stuck his face in it.  
He brushed his teeth facing the wall and dropped the toothbrush back in the cup next to the shower, and turned to wash his hair. 

Cas’s voice came through the shower curtain.

“Towel’s on the bar when you’re done,” he said, then retreated, closing the bathroom door behind him.

When Dean gathered himself and came out, Sam was sitting at the table with a plate of pancakes in front of him. Charlie was cooking bacon at the stove, and the savory waves were washing towards and over him.

Pancakes were always Charlie’s solution to a problem. 

She smiled at him encouragingly and turned back to the stove. 

“Hey,” Dean sat across from his brother.

Sam didn’t move.

“Sam,” he begged. 

Sam dully met Dean’s gaze before his hair fell back over his eyes and he was gone again.  
Well, at least he was still in there somewhere.   
Dean swallowed the fiery lump in his throat and felt it migrate unhelpfully to his chest.

“Pass the syrup?” he asked hopefully.

He asked two more times before Sam stood up and hurled the plastic syrup bottle at Dean’s head. He ducked just in time, and Charlie shrieked smally as the bottle hit the wall.  
Sam looked startled for a second, as if the action had happened without his knowledge or permission; he was there again for a second, and then he left the room.

Dean got up and picked up the syrup bottle, feeling Charlie’s eyes on him.  
So now it was silence, drinking, Want To Forget, and throwing. 

\-----  
The patrons of the Roadhouse had built a sort of shrine to Jessica in the corner booth. The table was overrun with mostly sunflowers and stuffed elephants, with a big printed photo of her in its epicenter. A candid shot of her, laughing.  
It was appropriately Jessica-esque.

“Very thoughtful of them,” Ellen told Dean while he helped her moved the bench to make room for more memorabilia. “But I hate it. Like it’s not hard enough already to be here? I’m trying to work, like...” 

She trailed off, then pointed her finger in a sort of punctuation. She always finished her sentences, even if it was non-verbally.  
Dean grunted, and picked up one of the elephants. 

“How’s your eye, honey?” 

Dean pretended he hadn’t heard her.

“We probably need something healthy for dinner, with all these casseroles with french onion soup, and mayonnaise and cheese. I’m so bloated.” 

Ellen hesitated for a moment, still trying to get a good look at his face. She sighed, and gave up.

“Mayonnaise, really?” 

Dean nodded. “Yeah. Someone brought like, a seven layer dip casserole, or something.”

“Salads and chicken breast, then?” 

“That sounds fantastic.” 

“Charlie is still getting Jo from the airport, right?” she asked. 

“Yeah. She lands at seven, right?” 

“Your phone’s ringing,” Ellen said.

“Cas,” Dean responded.

She smiled softly. “You’re not going to answer it?” 

“I don’t know what you think he is to me,” he said, trying to speak nicely. It didn’t come across very well, and his voice was wobbly. “But my best friend just died, and he needs to learn some fucking boundaries.”

“I’m sure he’s just concerned,” she said gently.

He nodded. “I know, but…”

“Call him back,” she said in her mom-voice. “I’m going to start cooking.”

He started walking away, and she called after him, “Oh, and put some ice on that eye.” 

\----  
Dean left Sam with Jo and Ellen.   
He’d told Cas to meet him at the Roadhouse, and it wasn’t technically a lie. Ellen owned the land that the basketball court was on, and so he was, by relation, still at the Roadhouse. 

He hissed softly as the cigarette butt singed his fingertips. It had burned to nothing in his hand, and he’d only taken a couple puffs. He flicked it away in disgust and reached into his pocket for another one. 

He chain-smoked until it got dark, trying to ignore the part of him that sort of hoped Cas would find his way around the back of the restaurant, and spot Dean hunched in the dark.  
The light over the court had gone out a few months back, and he had happily kept it that way.   
The chain link fence rattled, and he caught his breath and held it. After a second, Cas slid down the wall and sat next to him.

“You’re kind of shit at hide and seek,” Cas told him. 

Dean grunted and held out the cigarette to him, and after a moment of hesitation, Cas took it. 

“Also,” Cas added, “I hate hide and seek. Especially when I just wanted to go out for drinks with a friend.”

“Sorry,” Dean mumbled.

“No you’re not. But it’s alright, all the same,” Cas sighed. He took a drag of the cigarette and coughed roughly. “I haven’t smoked since college.”

“You smoked at any point?” Dean asked incredulously. 

“Not the conversation I came here to have. Dean, how are you?” 

“I’m sitting in the dark smoking a whole pack of cigarettes by myself. How do you think I’m doing?” he asked.

Cas reached out, slowly, and put his hand over Dean’s.   
Dean sucked in his breath and, after a moment, let himself sag against Cas.

“I’m sorry about hiding. I’m a fucking baby.” 

Cas squeezed his shoulders and didn’t say anything.

“I’ve been shitty to you,” Dean blurted after a few moments.

Cas flicked ashes onto the pavement, and studied them in the pitch black. 

“Yep,” he agreed.

Dean nodded and stared out into the night. It was as close to an apology as he could bring himself.   
His chest tightened, and he gasped for air. His eyes were stinging. 

“Jessica liked you,” he said.

“I’m honored. I liked her too. But Dean, we don’t have to talk about it.”

Dean turned towards him, and as Cas flinched, Dean realized that he’d caught sight of the angry red swelling on the side of Dean’s face, around his half-shut eye.   
His left eye was almost swollen shut, and already, a deep mixture of green and purple was spreading.

“Dean, what happened?” 

Dean turned his face away. 

“Nothing” he said shortly. “I opened the refrigerator door into my face. It was stupid, really.” 

“Dean…”

“It’s going to be Christmas, soon,” Dean cut him off.

He charged past the hollow feeling that Jessica wasn’t going to be with them. He charged past it as hard as he could, but it followed him. 

“We’ve known each other for over a year,” he said. “You coming to Christmas again this year?”

Cas shook his head. “You don’t have to ask me.”

“Consider it a peace offering.”

“I hate to intrude.”

“We need some...I don’t know. We need to have you there. Please come.”

“Alright.” 

Dean went to light another cigarette, and then reconsidered. 

\----

“Well, that sucked,” Dean quipped. Cas watched as he tried to smile, and then faltered, and failed.

Cas started to protest that no, it hadn’t been that bad, but he stuck his hands in his pockets and shut his mouth instead.  
Christmas had sucked. They’d all known it would.   
The knowing didn’t actually make it any easier.  
Worse than the silent gaps had been the attempts at festive conversation that had been hollow for a few painful moments before they had fizzled out.   
Sam had spent the entire time, dinner included, sitting in the leather armchair by the fireplace, staring into the flames like a dysmorphic Scrooge, holding a 40 of Captain between his knees. Ava had made him a plate, and he’d eaten it in the chair, just glimpsable from the dining room table. Actually, Cas wasn’t entirely sure that Sam had actually eaten anything.  
He had sat next to Dean, had tried to help set the table, tried to help with the cooking.   
After the pie had been eaten, and they’d finally just put in a Christmas movie to fill the silence, Cas had taken a doggy bag, hugged Dean, and then pecked Ellen and Ava on the cheeks, and told an unresponsive Sam goodbye.  
He was sitting on his front bumper, crying, when Dean came outside and found him.   
Cas had quickly tried to dry his eyes, but Dean had seen him.   
Dean had told him that it was alright, he was allowed to cry.   
Now, they were standing awkwardly next to Cas’s car, after Cas had said that he was going home about a dozen times. 

“You know,” Dean said, “I keep doing weird things, like I think it’ll bring her back, or something.” 

He laughed wetly. “I donated to a research project. A cure. And yeah, great, like, I donated to saving some people. Or trying to, or whatever. But it’s not going to bring her back. Not even sort of.” 

Cas leaned over and kissed him. 

As soon as he’d done it, he was horrified with himself. He pulled back, and looked away, to give Dean some dignity.

“I am so, so sorry,” he said. “I...shit. I’m sorry.”

“You were trying to make me feel better,” Dean said, but his voice was shaking. 

Cas turned back to him. “I had no right to do that, though. Please accept my forgiveness.” 

Dean tucked his hands in his armpits and nodded. He was pale. 

“I should go home,” Cas said. 

Dean nodded. 

“Merry Christmas,” Cas told him. 

“Merry Christmas.” 

\---  
Sam had thought that the cliche in movies about the shitty coffee in AA meetings had been just that, cliches. Now that he was sitting here though, with his very first ‘hey, yep, I’ve lost control of my life and I’m in a fucking AA meeting’ cup of coffee, he thought that the shittiness of the coffee had actually been drastically understated.  
Maybe, he thought, wrapping his hands around the cup and trying to forget the taste in his mouth, the coffee was meant to be more of a warm. comforting thing to hold than as a beverage.   
Still, he made an effort to sip at it while he picked out a few others who must be newbies, too; a thin blonde girl in the opposing corner to where he was standing clutched her coffee with the same resentful skittishness that was probably just as obvious on his own face. A business woman was sitting in the back row of folding metal chairs already, her Gucchi bag sitting next to her, pressed against her hip. She was staring resolutely forward, pretending that no one else was there, or maybe pretending that she wasn’t there, either.   
Not everyone seemed to be in their own personal hell in this church basement, though; there was a small handful of people who fell into place comfortably, greeting each other, even laughing, as more people trickled in.  
A tall black man with a military haircut and broad shoulders approached Sam, hand stretched out. 

“Hey, I don’t think we’ve met,” he began.

“This is my first meeting,” Sam gripped his hand and shook it.

“Ah, that would be why. Name’s Jake.”

“Sam.” 

“Welcome, Sam. Hope that you get what you’re looking for.”

Well, at least he hadn’t told Sam to have a good time. Sam nodded and swallowed. 

“We’re going to start in a few minutes...I don’t know if other groups are like this one, but there’s a strict rule here that we never start on time,” Jake explained.   
He started walking, gesturing for Sam to walk with him. Jake headed towards the front of the room, but must have sensed Sam’s hesitation, and settled for the second row back.

“Here, have a seat,” Jake said, picking a chair. Sam took one close to him. “Sam, there’s one thing you gotta know if you’re gonna be a regular. Ain’t nobody starts this meeting until Hilda comes.”

“Hilda?” 

“You’ll get it when you see her,” Jake assure him. 

“I’ll be right back,” Sam said hurriedly. 

He stood, balancing his coffee carefully in the chair, and went back to the table that the coffee and donuts were spread out on.  
The thin girl was still standing there; hadn’t moved. Most of the group was already sitting down.  
Sam smiled as he approached her, questioning why he was doing it in the first place.

“Hey,” he began. “I don’t know about you, but I’m new, and I sure as hell don’t want to sit by myself tonight.”

“Doesn’t look like you will be,” she said shortly.

“Three’s company,” he said, and instantly hated himself for saying such a stupid phrase. “Look, just come sit with us, please?”

Her jaw tightened for a moment, and then she made eye contact. “Fine.”

“Thanks.”

He trailed in front of her, turning and trying a half smile on her. “I’m Sam.” 

“Madison.”

Hilda finally arrived fifteen minutes after seven. Like Jake had promised he would, Sam almost instantly understood why the meeting didn’t start without her.  
Hilda marched into the room, holding herself up to her full height of what couldn’t have been more than 5’2’’, grinning as she greeted every person in the room. Everyone knew her and beamed at her, even letting loose a few quick whoops and hollers as she strode up the crooked aisle the space between the chairs made towards the front of the room. She was wearing a daring leopard print dress that stretch tightly across her full chest, and as she turned towards him, Sam saw that she had a razor blue streak dyed in her hair. She smiled widely at him.  
And then the meeting began.  
He tried to make it work out so that he could share last, but it turned out that half of the room was pulling exactly the same thing. It was his turn so quickly that his coffee was still hot when he set it down under his chair and made his way up to the front.   
Did the whole “Hi, I’m Sam”, and got a resounding echo from the others in the room that would have been funny, except that it was probably the least funny thing in existence.   
He stood in front of them, behind a rickety-looking plastic podium. His name was easy. And oh god, he was really doing this. He was really here.

“I’m Sam,” he repeated. “I’ve been sober for about, uh, thirty hours.”

He scratched his ear, not sure what to say next. The faces looking at him were patient and understanding, though, and a few seconds later he got his footing and pushed on.

“Um, so the last time I was talking to a group of people was at my girlfriend’s funeral nine months ago,” he began. “Um, her name was Jess.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TWs: death, loss of a loved one, vomiting, alcohol abuse, violent emotional outbursts, blood, medical emergencies


	6. Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading. It's my hope to write a sequel to this; I've tried to write an ending that gives me the ability to end it here if I don't end up finishing, but also to keep it open on the chance that I do.
> 
> As Chuck says, endings are hard.
> 
> anywhoo. Love you guys. Thanks again for taking the time to put your eyes on my stuff. I worked hard on it, and it means a lot.

Half Moon Bay was almost totally empty, and seeing as how it was eleven PM on a Monday night, that made sense.  
Jess swung her arms as she walked next to Sam, their fingers loosely intertwined.  
Sam hummed under his breath, and Jess caught was he was singing, joining in with the lyrics. Sam had a good voice, but he was shy about it.  
By the time they were finished with the song, Jess was wheezing with laughter; Sam had slid and riffed as many notes as he could, wailing ridiculously high notes. Jess had somehow manage to limp through to the end with him, half laughing and half singing.

“If there’s anyone else out here, they’re going to think that some wild animal is dying,” she gasped.

“The only thing out here is probably beach monsters,” Sam observed teasingly.

“What?” Jess laughed.

“No, they’re very real. My dad used to tell me about them; they wear plastic bags on their heads, and they come up on the beach at night and eat you,” Sam protested in his most serious voice.

“Oh,” Jess grinned. “Where the heck do you come up with this shit?”

“Hey! It’s not shit. I told you, my dad told me. Scout’s honor.” 

“You simply can’t be reasoned with,” Jess observed.

“Not a chance,” Sam agreed.

“So why did you want to walk on the beach? It’s a weeknight, you have work in the morning, don’t you?” 

“Yeah,” Sam stopped at one of the picnic tables and sat on top of it, patting the spot next to him. 

He clicked off his flashlight as Jess settled in next to him, wrapping her arms around him.

“We should make this quick. It’s getting pretty chilly,” she commented. She wished she’d worn her sweater...the one he’d given her for Christmas last year would have done nicely. 

“Yeah, this actually isn’t going to be a short conversation,” Sam confessed.

“I’m listening,” she said.

“Um, okay, so first I want to say that this is because in a few minutes I’m going to ask you to officially move in with me.”

“Right now?”

“Yeah. Don’t answer, yet, though.”

“Okay.” 

“You...you need to know this. I promised myself that you’d know all of this before we moved in together, and well…” Sam laughed nervously. “I really want you to move in with me.” 

“I’d like that.” she said softly

Sam found Jess’ hand in the dark and gripped it tightly, and Jess gripped back. She knew what was about to happen. From their relationship over the past several years, there was no question in her mind. He was about to tell her what they both already knew, that he wanted to marry her someday. That he wanted them to be together forever.  
She put her hand over his.

“Babe, wait.” 

“Why?”

“I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

THE END


End file.
